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Reviewed by:
  • Reigns of Terror
  • Eric D. Weitz
Reigns of Terror. By Patricia Marchak (Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003) 306 pp. $19.95

Reigns of Terror sets out a clear argument about genocides and crimes against humanity in the twentieth century and then works through eight cases that span the globe. The author aims to remedy what she sees as a misplaced emphasis on race and ethnicity in most explanations for mass atrocities. In her view, such events occur when states strive to maintain an existing hierarchy of inequality by violently acting against a subordinate group. Race and ethnicity are merely the cover arguments that states use to justify their repressive actions, which most often occur in situations of social turmoil. A capable armed force, often supplemented by paramilitaries, becomes the agent of rescuing or reshaping a paralyzed state via mass violence against targeted populations. Marchak sets out the explanation in the first half of the book and then proceeds to case studies on the Armenian genocide, the Ukrainian famine, the Holocaust, Burundi and Rwanda, Chile, Cambodia, Argentina, and Yugoslavia.

The clear explanation and the broad geographical reach of Reigns of Terror are noteworthy. Marchak's contention that ethnicity or race in and of themselves do not provide adequate explanations for genocide and other crimes is certainly correct. Nonetheless, a good part of her overall argument is tautological and other parts insufficient. Genocide and other mass atrocities are undoubtedly ways of maintaining difference that invariably entail the expropriation of the assets of the targetted group. But to argue that "the ethnic dimension provides the excuse and the ideological rationale for the action" in insufficient (viii). Leaving aside the distinctions between race and ethnicity, which are often blurred in this book, race is a way of construing human difference and of structuring inequalities. Race provides people with a powerful and seductive sense of belonging, similar to, but even more dangerous than, nationalism. Marchak's reduction of mass atrocities to an instrumental action by the state fails to capture the powerful dynamic of race and certainly cannot fully explain the mass mobilizations of perpetrators that so often accompanied genocides and ethnic cleansings in the twentieth century.

Moreover, race as a constructed form of identity is not so much about "people defining themselves and others by their ethnic roots" but about regimes imposing categorizations upon populations that, over time, come to be seen as natural (viii). Hence, ideology is far more than "the bridge between the perception of a group as potential enemies and the determination to eradicate them" (21). This perspective presumes the existence of ideology as a fixed entity that simply gets called into play by the regime in question when it is functional to do so. Yet ideologies are constantly being developed, are often in flux, and play multiple roles within a society. Marchak underplays historical contingencies and development of ideology in general and of race in particular. [End Page 433]

Reigns of Terror also does not clearly distinguish between genocide and other forms of mass violence, although Marchak deploys the term "politcide." Scholars and public figures debate this point endlessly, and much of it turns on the definition encoded in 1948 in the United Nations Genocide Convention and since adopted as law by more than 130 countries. The Convention has serious insufficiencies, and many scholars challenge the applicability of a legal standard for social-science research. Nonetheless, it is still important to draw distinctions between genocide, the "crime of crimes," and other mass violations of human rights. It matters, both historically and politically, whether a regime is seeking to annihilate an entire population group or is exercising more or less "normal," albeit brutal, forms of repression.

As befits a work in political science, Reigns of Terror has a clear, almost law-like explanatory structure. This approach has its benefits, but it drastically underestimates the role of historical contingencies in the unleashing of mass atrocities. Too much of Marchak's writing presumes "plans" or "planning stages" (4–5, for example). The genocide of the Armenians began as a series of murderous actions by the Young Turk regime that escalated into genocide, but little evidence suggests that any kind...

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